Spain, Part 5: Toledo

It's getting to be the end of February and I still haven't finished posting about our Spain trip. I better get on with it. I'm sure it's no surprise that Toledo was both Mr X's and my favorite part of our trip. It is a breathtaking little medieval city that is definitely worth exploring. I guess most people (tourists) stay in Madrid and then take a day trip to Toledo rather than staying there. I highly recommend actually getting a hotel in Toledo. There's more to see than you can squeeze into a single day and plus it's just so charming that you won't want to leave once you get there. Mr X and I took the train from Madrid. It only takes about 45 minutes.

These pictures are in no particular order (except that first one, I suppose) so here are some photos of Toledo:

This is a panorama looking out from the center of Toledo. I don't know if this small blog picture does the photo justice. I'm certain that the photo doesn't do Toledo justice, but when viewed large it's looks quite nice even in the photo.

This was the view from our hotel room at night. The building on the right is the public school. I forget what the building on the left was exactly. Our hotel was a quaint little place that was right next to the cathedral in the center of the town. It was perfect.

This was also taken from one of the windows in our hotel room. It's part of the cathedral.

We climbed up to the top of one of several towers in the city and we thoroughly enjoyed the spectacular views. (Above and below.)

Below is just a picture of a random building we happened upon while lost in the streets. Usually we're pretty decent and finding our way around but we got lost several times in Toledo. Luckily it's a small town so eventually our aimless wanderings would bring us to some part we recognized enough to wend our way home. I thought it had a lovely facade.

Toledo has a lot of Moorish influence in the architecture. Often buildings built by the Moors were kept fairly intact and just reused embellished with Christian influences later. In this picture Mr X is standing in an area below a Christian church which was built on top of a Moorish building. I guess they started excavating and discovered that the building that was here before had a crypt of sorts in the bottom of it. Mr X is standing by the tombs.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the cathedral in Toledo. It was unfortunate because it was a gorgeous cathedral - actually it was so large that the main part was a cathedral but the rest has been made into a museum of sorts. They love El Greco in Toledo and it shows in the cathedral because an abundance of his artwork is on display there. We couldn't take picture to show you, sadly enough, but Mr X always tries to sneak some photos anyhow. This is a shot of part of the ceiling of the cathedral. (I'm a little bit obsessed with the ceilings in all of the big cathedrals in Europe because for some reason I find them strangely captivating. Mr X is always helpful in indulging me in my obsession.)

The road were so narrow in Toledo that the cars (very small cars) had to stop before entering some of the street and pull both of their side view mirrors in so they could fit down the road. If I drove around there I have no doubt that my car would be completely scratched, front to end, on both sides. But I do love narrow European streets.

Below is the cathedral at night. (2 photos.)

This is the inside of a cloister. Once again, I love the ceiling and arches.

This is still inside the cloister...there's a lovely garden in the middle with fragrant orange trees everywhere. It kind of felt like home for a minute and it was difficult for me to resist the urge to start stealing citrus.

This is just a local house on the edge of the town that we encountered. I like the look of the laundry hanging in the obviously medieval town.

This is by one of the several entrances to the old part of Toledo. Mr X and I figured that since it looked like something tourists could explore that meant it was. We were wrong. It's now an office of some sort and we pretty much got 'shooed' out of there.

The rest of the pictures don't really need much of an explanation. They are just pretty pictures. At least I thought so.

(See the Moorish influence in the structures behind Mr X?)

(A view from our hotel room during the day.)